


hold me without hurting me (you'll be the first who ever did)

by prestonsarchives



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, anyway i posted this on twitter and a bunch of people said it made them cry, both segments of this were written between the hours of five and six in the morning, except she's not really a character because like. you know the story. she's kinda dead, it's really just me being sad as fuck and projecting, sleep deprived and gay? this one's for you my love, so hey maybe avoid this one if you're looking for a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28977510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestonsarchives/pseuds/prestonsarchives
Summary: the aftermath of jamie finding dani's body — in which owen sharma turns up as though he can hope to save a woman who has lost everything.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44





	hold me without hurting me (you'll be the first who ever did)

**Author's Note:**

> lol i wrote this instead of doing my english coursework and i have absolutely zero regrets

* * *

_I hear your voice and it seems_

_As if it was all a dream_

_I wish it was all a dream_

_Can we go on like it once was?_

— another story, the head and the heart

* * *

There is a taxi driver, a gardener, a body, and a lake. It sounds like a riddle, really. Except — if only.

Owen picks up on the sixth ring. This is an unfamiliar number, and it’s clear he’s expecting someone to make a reservation.

“This is A Batter Place. Penne for your thoughts?”  
  
Jamie can’t even bring herself to roll her eyes — barely processes his joke at all. The silence stretches until Owen speaks again.

“Hello?”

Another beat.

“Owen?”

He pauses. They haven’t spoken in months, not since her and Dani flew over to see him.

“Jamie?”

She cradles the phone to her cheek, trying and failing to stifle a sob because he is the one familiar thing left in a world which has been turned so _fucking_ upside-down.

“Oh, god. Jamie.”

And he knows. He knows, and knows, and knows, and suddenly there’s a noise on the other end of the line and she’s not sure what it is until he heaves a sob. Jamie’s never heard Owen cry. Not at his mum’s funeral, not when they found Hannah — she knows he did go off somewhere, handled it privately, brushed himself off and pretended all was okay — but this is _so_ jarring.

“Oh god.”

He says it again, but the edge of the second word is tainted by another sob she knows he can’t control.

“Jamie. I’m so sorry.”

He is the one person that this could ever mean anything from, because this is Owen, this is the only soul left that she knows has felt grief like this.

“Owen—” she chokes out the word again, feeling all too heavily the weight of Hannah’s death crashing into them both. Wants to say something, wants to say _anything,_ but she doesn’t know how to breach this topic in front of the cab driver who looks more and more bewildered with every passing second.

“You’re at Bly?”

Bly. Of course she’s at Bly, and the name alone is enough of a memory to send her careering into the side of the car — it dizzies her, tips her forwards, a freight train the size of thirteen lost years slamming into her with full force.

“Okay. Jamie? Stay there. I’m coming to get you. Please…”

 _Please don’t do anything stupid,_ he is going to say, though Jamie knows she couldn’t. How desperately she _wants_ to tread with all of the grace of a person who has just lost everything into that godforsaken house, make her way to the parapet, step off before her instincts catch up with her. There is a ghost, on these grounds, though — there is a ghost that wouldn’t let her.

“Owen?” She’s dropped the phone. The taxi driver’s already out of the car, leaning to take back hold of that clunky portable and staring at her with something she vaguely recognises to be pity.

Faintly, she hears him offer her a ride back, his accent tinged with something London-bred. _No,_ and it’s a head shake rather than a word, it’s her digging deep into her purse and thrusting a few twenties at the cabbie — they’re American dollars, but he doesn’t say anything, shifting the money gently from trembling hands. He has assumed enough of this story not to say much else — he knows there is a sobbing woman and a lake and a name, _Dani,_ that he’s heard her whisper a few times now — and it’s with a careful quietude that he drives away. Jamie thinks she watches him go, though she’s not fully sure what she’s looking at, any more. Her legs give out from under her before she can really think about falling at all.

* * *

When he finds her — god, when he finds her, she’s on the ground. Pressed into the mud like it’s the only thing left to hold her, hands out and grasping for a soul that isn’t there. Five hours, it took to get him here; two in the airport, one on the flight, another two for the drive from Heathrow. He hasn’t packed anything, figures that the faster he can move, the faster he’ll be able to save her.

He arrives, though, at Bly, sees a shuddering body carved like a fossil into the earth, sees the glint of a ring he knows meant _so_ fucking much to someone who has absolutely nothing left. He arrives, though, and he realises — he’s too late. There will be no saving Jamie Taylor.

Owen — thirty-nine year old Owen, who isn’t quite as fit as he once was — is sprinting, tripping across the grounds, stumbling over the weeds that nobody’s tended to in over a dozen years, praying to a god he stopped believing in when Hannah died that he hasn’t lost Jamie, too. Jamie, the _only_ thing he has left. The kids, who have forgotten him. Henry, who never knew him well in the first place. His mother, who’s dead. Hannah, who’s dead. Dani, who’s _dead_. This can’t be fair. No two people should be forced through this much.

Owen — thirty-nine year old Owen, who knows what it’s like to lose the second half of your soul — crashes into the ground beside her, already sobbing as he gathers Jamie into his trembling arms. She’s a thin shred of fabric, barely, crumpling into him as if there’s no strength left in her body at all.

“Jamie? It’s me. It’s Owen. You’re safe, okay? I’ve got you. You’re okay. Thank _god_ you’re okay.”

Finally, she shifts, if only to collapse further into him, burrow her head into the crook of his neck, wrap her frail arms around his body because he’s all she has to anchor herself.

“You’re here.”

He nods, except something within him shatters. Though her voice is raw, breaking barely through the silence like lamplight through cloth, there’s something so shocked about her words that it _burns_ him. _You’re really here_ , she whispers again, and he can tell she doesn’t believe that he came at all. Can tell that she doesn’t believe she has anyone still around to love her, any more.

“I’m here.”

“You’re the only person I have left.”

And oh, _god_ , because it’s the truth.

“ _Jamie_ ,” he whispers, pulls her ever closer, and sobs.

“ _Owen_ ,” she replies, and she’s sobbing harder.

Just — just two broken people. Just two broken people, trying and failing to fit the shards of their desecrated hearts together.

“She’s gone.”

Some part of him just can’t (won’t, _wouldn’t_ ) accept it. Not until this. Not until he hears the words falling from the lips of the woman who loved her the most. There is a cord, tugged through his body, holding him up, a cord that has _been_ holding him up through all of these impossible hardships.

The cord snaps.

Something breaks free from his own throat, now, crashing like an illness through the air, something far past a sob, closer to a howl, because all of these _fucking_ memories are back and they _will not leave_. Hannah tasting the batter of his strawberry cake. Dani almost attacking him with a poker on one of her first days at Bly. Jamie, sneaking off with the love of her life if only to fall further. Hannah, Dani, Jamie, Hannah’s relentless teasing of his awful jokes, Dani’s laughter that would follow up every pun he made, Jamie’s mocking scowl that would hide her own quiet chuckle, and it’s a cycle, _Hannah, Dani, Jamie, Hannah, Dani, Jamie_ , over and over again as if to slam it into his mind that things are never going to go back to the way they were.

The tears that fall now — they’re _so_ heavy.

Heavy, like the weight of never getting to tell someone you love them.

These tears feel like grief.

“I know,” he murmurs, and Jamie can only sob, one of those gasping cries that leaves you faint.

 _I know, I know, I know_ , even as it feels as though they’re both fading like wood into ash, even as it feels as though if either party lets go, they’ll lose each other, too.

“Please don’t leave me,” Jamie whispers, and how his heart aches for her now. Everyone she has ever loved, has left her.

“Please don’t leave me, Owen,” and the world will fall to its knees around them _. I can’t lose anyone else._

**Author's Note:**

> comments are very much appreciated, as per usual :))) i'm writing a few other things at the moment (pieces which are decidedly happier) so keep an eye out for them hahahah lots of love to you all


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